Artificial intelligence and cognitive computing is the latest in a series of technological developments that have affected the value of human ability. Graeme Codrington discusses the development in this video.

Computers have the advantage

About 100 years ago if you wanted to be quite successful in the world it would have been very clever for you to be quite physically fit. Because in the industrial age, as before that in the agrarian age, in the age of farming the people who either owned the land or owned the factories or worked on the land or worked in the factories, they were the people who were in charge. Those were your assets, physical ability. What we’ve done over the last 100 years is replaced peoples’ physical, the physical needs in terms of what we need from them physically with machines, you know, the combined harvester and the container and the robots in factories. And then for the last 50 years we have ploughed our resources, as human beings we’ve become clever by being clever. We have moved into the information age where your mental ability is what sets you apart from other people. Now, somebody who was gifted at birth, not by my choice, but was gifted with a reasonable intelligence and a nice IQ and a middle class family that could get me through university, that’s been brilliant.
Because I’ve been able to use my brain to make money, but unfortunately right now computers are about to do to me what robots and machines did to my farm working, factory working uncles and grandparents. They’re about to make me redundant because they can think faster than I can. They can think more than I can. They don’t need to take a break to eat or sleep or all the other things I like to do.
Inside Finance TV has more fantastic video by Graeme Codrington and other experts on the future of business.

Artificial intelligence and cognitive computing is the latest in a series of technological developments that have affected the value of human ability. Graeme Codrington discusses the development in this video.

Computers have the advantage

About 100 years ago if you wanted to be quite successful in the world it would have been very clever for you to be quite physically fit. Because in the industrial age, as before that in the agrarian age, in the age of farming the people who either owned the land or owned the factories or worked on the land or worked in the factories, they were the people who were in charge. Those were your assets, physical ability. What we’ve done over the last 100 years is replaced peoples’ physical, the physical needs in terms of what we need from them physically with machines, you know, the combined harvester and the container and the robots in factories. And then for the last 50 years we have ploughed our resources, as human beings we’ve become clever by being clever. We have moved into the information age where your mental ability is what sets you apart from other people. Now, somebody who was gifted at birth, not by my choice, but was gifted with a reasonable intelligence and a nice IQ and a middle class family that could get me through university, that’s been brilliant.
Because I’ve been able to use my brain to make money, but unfortunately right now computers are about to do to me what robots and machines did to my farm working, factory working uncles and grandparents. They’re about to make me redundant because they can think faster than I can. They can think more than I can. They don’t need to take a break to eat or sleep or all the other things I like to do.
Inside Finance TV has more fantastic video by Graeme Codrington and other experts on the future of business.

Uber Disruption

New technologically innovative transport company Uber have turned the taxi industry upside down. Tech expert Robert Scoble explains what happened.

Uber disrupt an industry

They have to be scared that they are going to be put out of business. You better be paranoid. Things like Uber came out four years ago and now it's everywhere. You need to understand the innovators that are changing your business. Uber knows where you are standing, that's why it serves you better than a taxi company, they have your credit card details and we can talk to each other. He doesn't have my real phone number but he can message and call me through and app.
Our briefing Uber Disruption – The reality of innovative technology has more information on Uber and more expert discussion on industry disruption.

Strategy development for investment was what Envestors was created to teach. Founding Director Oliver Woolley discusses the importance of preparing for investment in this TV show.

Investment strategy development

One of the reasons we set up Envestors is that we thought there was a bit of education needed on both the investor and entrepreneur side. So we provide training for investors. We produce a guide to how to invest as a business angel and we do a seminars for investors. So our idea is to educate both the investor and the entrepreneur and try and get them close enough so that we can get good deals done.
So we find that a lot of companies aren't particularly well prepared so we run an investment readiness briefing on a Tuesday morning every two weeks, which is free. It is essentially a two hour seminar about the practicalities and realities and the obligations of raising external equity finance. We find that at the end of that, that the company has though a lot about their business plan but they haven't though enough about it from an investment perspective. So we will then work with a company to make sure that there is a full and detailed investment proposal.

Investors look for businesses with good governance

Good governance in a company will appeal to investors, who want to know their investment will be secure, as Oliver Woolley discusses in this TV show.

Investors and good governance

One of the main criteria for finding a successful investment is normally down to the quality of their management team, and you’ll get a lot of investors that will say the three most important things are management, management and management. And certainly we’ve had some very successful businesses, which are still yet to exit, but it’s usually because they’ve got a very, very good strong dynamic experienced CEO, as well as a complete Board and a Board that’s adding value and can help steer the business through to exit.

Keep browsing shows on Inside Finance TV for more expert discussion on business investment and good governance.

Business strategy models have to adaptable to future disruptions and developments. In this TV show Keith Coats of TomorrowToday discusses strategic thinking for leaders.

Business strategy models in an unpredictable world

Leaders have to be future-focused. Levi right now have a great slogan, which says ‘the future has left, so go forth’. Jim Data is a retired futurist and he articulated that past thinking amongst futurists was something like this … I might have some of the percentages slightly wrong but the rough ratios is 80% of our tomorrows would be built on what futurists call continuations, so if you want to understand tomorrow, look at the DNA of today, 80%. 15% would be cycles – economic, political social cycles – and 5% would be novelties. Now, in the futurist language a novelty is the curve ball, the unexpected, the 9/11, the thing that very few people could foresee. I’ll preface that with past thinking. Current thinking amongst futurists has inverted that table, turned it on its head. They are telling us that up to 80% of our tomorrow is what they call novelty, we simply do not know. Now, even if they’re half correct I wouldn’t go to war over those percentages, it’s the trend here we’re looking at, that the bulk of our tomorrows is going to be a surprise, going to be the unexpected, the unpredictable. The question then becomes how do you build continuity in that? What does the organisation that learns how to build planes in the air, as it were, look like in that context? For one thing it renders redundant strategic planning, you cannot plan your way into that kind of uncertainty. We need companies today who understand the emphasis needs to be on strategic thinking and at all levels of the organisation, this is a leadership agenda.

Inside Finance is very interested in business strategy models and the future business world. Browse our video player for related content.

Placing winning bets on disruption

Business strategy models can take inspiration from many places. In this TV show Dean van Leeuwen discusses innovative disruption and the two aspects that leaders need to focus on, to make the most of it.

Business strategy models for making the most of disruptive innovation

Sebastian Thrun, he is one of the leader scientists on the Google self-driving car project. When he was 18 year old he lost his best friend in a car accident, and Sebastian set himself the goal of saving 1.2million lives every single year, now 1.2 million lives is the number of people that die in car accidents every year. As the lead scientist on the Google self-driving car Sebastian has been doing some amazing things and what’s, if you think about the self-driving car, what it really is doing is it has thousands of these magical sensors round the car and it creates a 3D real time map of the world environment around it, so it is capturing massive amounts of information. It’s processing that information in real time, if it wasn’t processing it in real time, there wouldn’t be hope. These cars they can drive around unassisted without anyone behind the steering wheel, and it’s using that information to real and immediate valuable effect. So what we’re seeing is that because of our ability to do all of this, and we all know because of Moore’s law, computers have been doubling in speed every 18 months, but in the last few years, if you combine our ability for massive amounts of storage space, broadband and WiFi, that doubling in speed has really started to mean something, to the point now where many of the things that we thought were impossible, so self-driving cars we thought were impossible, we can now do.

3D printers, it’s the same thing, you know gathering massive amounts of information, scanning the object using a CAD file, printing the object out right in front of you immediately. Rapid prototyping, it’s the same concept our ability to gather massive amounts of information, process it in real time, and use it to valuable and immediate effect, and that’s the key, the first key thing that’s happening at the moment.

So business leaders need to be asking two questions, what’s your Google car? And what can you do that you once believed was impossible? Because you probably can now do it because of the power behind these technologies.

The second thing is, generational. You need to be understanding how the different generations look at these technologies. Many of these new technologies, these new innovations are for the younger, the Gen Y and these digital natives. It’s not weird it’s not something that’s different, it’s very normal for them. Douglas Adams the Author said that anything that happens when you are born is tottaly normal, anything that happens when you’re in your 30s, your 20s and your 30s is revolutionary, anything that happens after you turn 40 is just weird and wrong, ok. So for most business leaders over the age of 40, most of what is happening around us is totally weird and wrong, for the young digital natives, all of these new technologies are totally normal, they are not even impressed by them. And we need to understand that, I don’t think we have even started to understand the disruptive force that the digital native’s generation is going to bring to the workplace. So to understand the impact, or the disruptive impact of technology, the two things are Impact of digital natives on your business as customers, as customers and as employees, and then how do you gather massive amounts of information, process that information, in real time and use to immediate and valuable effect.

Inside Finance is very interested in business strategy models and disruptive innovation, and we have more great videos from Dean van Leeuwen.

Support for UK entrepreneurs is increasing – business growth show

In this business growth show Alistair Brew discusses the financial industry supporting entrepreneurial businesses.

Business growth show - Finance support for entrepreneurs

There’s absolutely no shortage of entrepreneurial talent in the UK, lots of fantastic ideas, I think it’s been about those, those ideas, those businesses now being picked up by the financial community and supported on the journey through its the different levels of expansion. It’s taking, I think it’s getting better and people are more joined-up and hopefully we can support some businesses from the very early stage right through to the giants. The Americans have traditionally done this very well, we want to be able to do that in the UK as well now.

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Corporate governance issues arising from boardroom structure includes how much each member should be paid for what they are expected to do, as Rob Wirszycz discusses in this TV show.

Corporate governance issues - Defining roles

Remuneration is a really sticky area in a sense. Actually, if I’m a Non-Executive Director I don’t expect to own any shares. My belief is that a Non-Executive Director is there to be completely objective. And I’ve been in many Board meetings where effectively the Board meeting is a meeting of the shareholders. Self-interest always wins in those meetings. So if I’m a Non-Executive Director in a meeting and I’m there, my job, I’ll accept a retain, a relatively small retainer, depending on what they want me to do. If they do anything away, outside of the brief, my belief is that that should be paid for separately. But so just to be a Non-Executive Director, I would like to be paid for the very clear, clearly-defined, but I don’t want, expect any shares. As a Chairman it’s different. Now the Chairman, I’m acting on behalf of the shareholders, so I actually have to have alignment with them, so what I always ask for when I’m Chairman is again a retainer, which is a small amount of money, relatively small amount of money, but I want to be able to earn shares based on the achievement of the plan. So if we achieve the plan, which I’m owning, then I believe that I should be aligned with the shareholders’ interests and I should be able to earn in shares into the business.

Following your entrepreneurial spirit

Entrepreneurial spirit cannot be taught. There comes a point when you need to stop moaning and start doing things your way. In this video Simon La Fosse explains why he became an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial spirit finds a better way to do business

I was getting a bit bored actually. I think partly boredom, partly you I kind of felt I’d reached a certain part, a time in my life when I was, I had enough evidence about working in a certain way being a really effective way to work and a pleasurable way to work and I’d seen too many organisations that I’d worked for just, I’m not saying it, it sounds a little bit arrogant but not quite seeming to get that. And so there comes a point where you’ve got to stop whinging and you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is and say “Actually, I think there’s a better way to do business and that’s what we’re going to stand for as a firm” and that was, I took a gulp, remortgaged the house, as far as the bank was concerned to build an extension, which is yet to be built, and took the dive.

Inside Finance will continue to bring you inspirational success stories from those with entrepreneurial spirit.

Business communication about director pay is important

Business communication between company leaders, shareholders and the workforce explaining the reasoning of a director's pay could help satisfy everyone. Caroline Newsholme explains further in this TV show.

Business communication is vital

A lot of shareholders probably feel dissatisfied and feel that director’s remuneration is more and more out of kilter, in some instances, with reality. When you look at what some directors are being paid it does feel a very long way from the average wage of a shareholder or a member of the workforce of that particular organisation, so there is bound to be increasing focus on what directors are being paid and how they are being rewarded. I think people just want to understand that they’re worth it and that it is justified.

Informed financial planning: Structuring tax efficient investments

Informed financial planning is essential when it comes to investments. Investment managers should be well informed of tax rules so that no errors are made. Michael Pagliari explains further in this business TV show.

Informed financial planning and investments

There are different categories of planning, so for resident domicile UK clients the principles are pretty well-established, there are certain types of securities that should and can sit perfectly well in portfolios and there are other types of securities that shouldn’t. So, to give an example, there are some tax efficiencies through using fixed income securities which trade at which trade at discounts, there’s advantages in using OECs but there are some other instruments which effectively take a capital gains tax charge and transform it into an income tax charge at, you know, a much higher rate. And then if you move on to the sort of res non-dom world, that’s a very sort of … a much more complicated area with much more potential for error. So for example it’s very important that income and capital are separated, managed in separate buckets; if those are mixed there can be very severe tax consequences. So it’s really basic housekeeping-type issues but extremely important that the investment manager has a good handle on them. Investment does involve risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up. This video contains information believed to be reliable but no guarantee is given. See Video for full disclaimer.